I know I am preaching to the choir here, so do 
not feel obliged to respond to this obvious vent 
about what is probably the bleeding obvious to you all...

I read today of yet another recording of the 
Goldberg Variations on the mighty Steinway 
(Beatrice Rana). I can only suppose that pianists 
are either unable to master the harpsichord, or 
just stuck in a Gould/Busoni mindset.

Having tried for YEARS to play Bach's music on 
the piano, I was never able to do so with 
conviction or personal satisfaction. Certain 
features seemed so badly composed for the 
instrument -- until I discoverd harpsichords 20 
or so years ago and all fell in place. (I can 
enjoy Glenn Gould's recordings from time to time, 
but when I hear him play works that are familiar 
to me in harpsichord guise I am unable to recognise them as the same pieces!)

Clearly the "battle" of persuading musicians to 
play baroque keyboard music on appropriate 
instruments is not won. At first the 
"traditionalists" had a point in that the results 
were often unmusical, and in many cases they 
still are, though the pendulum has swung from 
sewing machine to unrhythmical. Today it seems 
that one is either a player of a Steinway 
/Bösendorfer or an "early keyboardist". Why are 
these two so incompatible? Why must a player be 
considered committed to one and not the other? 
(Aside: in his edition of the 48, e.g. his notes 
to the B minor P&F of Book I, Tovey refers 
approvingly to the clavichord; was he the first modern pianist to do this?)

How to convince the seemingly invincibly 
ignorant, who are often nice people, and who can 
play the heck out of Liszt and Brahms, but not 
enter into the spirit of Froberger or the 
Couperins, and who seemingly imagine that Bach 
would have wasted hours of his life composing for 
the wretched instruments that they take harpsichords and clavichords to be?

Collectively it seems we are doing something 
wrong in not being able to win this "battle".

David

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